Predigt Text 07-11-2021

There lives a longing deep within me" Dear congregation, dear friends!

Infinitely distant from God – and at the same time: infinitely close. The Psalms dare to praise this God. To sing to him. A song rises from the bottom of the soul. And deep inside us humans, the words resonate – for thousands of years.

Old words are – from another time. And we have a hard time with some of them. Dorothee Sölle advises to eat the Psalms. You should put them in your mouth, taste how they taste, these words.

They are not bite-sized bites of white bread, no, rather whole seed bread.

Or a dough flatbread, baked in the desert over the fire. Sometimes with hard crust and ash residues. Sometimes sprinkled with the wild herbs of the desert.

Seasoned with the scent of coriander, probably also mixed with the salt of tears or soaked in the oil of joy.

You have to chew the words, move them in your mouth and at the same time in your heart. Absorb them. Then they will nourish and at the same time tell their story: Lord, you explore me and know me. I am sitting or getting up, so you know it; you understand my thoughts from afar.

Some people are frightened by these words. Is there someone who watches over me like a watchdog? No, God is not a guard. His gaze is not like the lens of a surveillance camera.

Nor is he a brain researcher who traces the currents and checks in which lobe of the brain something is stirring.

And even more so, he is not a petty pedant who accurately registers every step.

No, his eye rests on us – benevolently, compassionately. His gaze is turned to us. He envelops us and covers us with the cloak of love: protective and gentle. “You know me”. These words radiate trust.

I imagine the first persons praying this psalm while sitting around the fire at night. The flames are extinguished. Left over coal glimmer is barely lighting up the darkness. Only now and then does a spark jump out cracking.

In the blackness of the night, it is not possible to identify where dangers lurk. But above the ones praying stands the high vault of heaven. It's like a big, black, upside-down pot for them. This pot has holes, all small holes through which the light of the sky flows down to the earth – white as milk.

And when people looked at the thousand-way sparkling stars, they knew that there was one behind everything that surrounds them, who protects and guards them in the dangers of the night. And whose blessing flows down to them – invisibly bright and kind.

And they knew: This also applies to the nights which one can get into in the middle of the day, when the soul darkens and pulls together into a black hole.

If I said: Darkness may cover me and night may be around me instead of light - darkness would not be dark with you, and the night would shine like the day.

And then people saw the light of heaven reflected at the bottom of their soul and the well inside them was filled with light: darkness is like light.

The night passes. The morning dawn emerges.

Already the light licks like a tongue at the bottom of the sky. The longing glows. Longing in the depth of the heart. Longing for God. That there is something, more than everyday business, more than appointments and worries, more than being driven in the stress of our days.

That there is something divine. Not just an it, but a you that appeals to me, that is there for me. The longing awakens like the dawn.

This longing does not only come from us humans. It is God who has placed this longing into our hearts. He touched our hearts, because he longs for us. After each and every one of us.

His longing dwells in me – at the bottom of my soul. It is where I feel myself longing for him. "There lives a longing deep within me".

It is you – God in me.

You knew me long before I existed.

When the Earth was not yet, when the universe and all the spheres of the galaxies did not yet exist. You have already conceived me as I am. I was already dwelling in your thoughts, which I was yet to become: loved by you.

You have made me arise, you have given shape to my life, formed a body for my soul, prepared my kidneys, awakened my heart to beat.

So I was before you – even before I was even born: Secure in the womb of my mother, surrounded by warmth and love – from you.

It was your longing for me that created me. Which breathed my breath so that my lungs unfolded.

It was your longing for me that elicited the first cry from me and threw me into life. There I was before you, reborn – a gift from your hand.

And so, I am always before you, surrounded by you. That's why I will always stay with you. Nothing can separate me from you: from all sides you surround me and hold your hand over me.

This realization is too wonderful and too high for me. I can't comprehend them.

What I understand, however, is enough that I praise you all the time and everywhere and thank you!

The sky glows in many shades of color.

Like the skin of a peach reddening.

The dawn pushes the night from the earth, puts its wings on the chain of mountains, spreads its wings over the horizon of the sea.

The dawn paints colors of longing on the sky until the sun awakens and rises as a glowing red ball.

If I took wings of the dawn and stayed at the far sea, your hand would also guide me there and your right hand would hold me.

Psalms can be eaten. You can sing them. You can pray them. You can dance them – with body and soul, that they fill you completely from the inside out.

The Jewish Rabbi Yitzchak of Berdichev wrote a song from this psalm, which he sang over and over again: "Where I go – you!

Where I stand – you!

Only you, again you, always you!

You, you, you!

I'm doing well – you!

When I am hurting – you!

Only you, again you, always you!

You, you, you!

Heaven – you, earth – you, Top – you, bottom – you, Where I turn, at every end Only you, again you, always you!

You, you, you!"

Amen.